Actresses 'increasingly invisible in their fifties'

Television star Amanda Redman criticises the lack of roles for middle-aged
women, the latest actress to complain about ageism on stage and screen

Actress Amanda Redman has complained about a dearth of roles for older women

By Padraic Flanagan

6:47PM BST 14 Apr 2014

Amanda Redman has added her voice to the growing outcry from actresses over the scarcity of decent roles for women in their fifties.

The 56-year-old former star of the top-rated BBC detective drama New Tricks complained that women grew increasingly invisible as they neared middle age.

“Any woman of my age would say that they feel invisible as women,” she told the Radio Times. “You’re ignored because you're not old and kooky, and you’re not young and sexy. You fall right in the middle of two stools.

“And that’s how the powers that be in casting tend to think as well, unfortunately.”

She revealed that she plays a game while watching television by trying to spot parts she could have played at her age. “There’s consistently nothing,” she said.

“Emma Thompson is probably the only person I can think of who’s my age and working and she’s had to write stuff for herself.”

Her comments follow attacks by other stars, such as Oscar winners Julie Walters and Emma Thompson, against ageism in the film and television industries that sideline actresses once they reach middle age.

Redman was speaking out ahead of her appearance in ITV’s Tommy Cooper biopic, Not Like That, Like This, starring David Threlfall, next Monday.

She plays Gwen, wife of the 1970s comedian who is revealed not only as an adulterer but as a wife beater - still a controversial subject for television, according to Redman.

“It’s very hard for us to look at it in 2014, but women of that generation did put up with stuff that women today wouldn’t necessarily put up with,” she said.

“Oddly, we’ve veered away from showing domestic violence on TV these days. It’s still incredibly prevalent so we should be portraying that.”

Redman said her first marriage, to actor Robert Glenister, informed her performance as Gwen, who was a showgirl when Cooper met her during the Second World War.

“A showbiz marriage works for some people, but in my experience it’s not a terrific thing. It’s easier because you understand more, of course, but it’s too pressured, especially if one person’s getting work and the other isn’t," she said.